On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 10:44:37AM -0700, meekerdb wrote: > But of course we can prove that a machine can think to the same > degree we can prove other people think. That we cannot prove it > from some self-evident set of axioms is completely unsurprising. > This comports with my idea that with the development of AI the > "question of consciousness" will come to be seen as a archaic, like > "What is life?". > > Brent
"What is life?" is _still_ a vexing question. Biologists don't worry too much about it, because the answer to it doesn't really help their day-to-day work. But in the Artificial Life field, it is more acute. Mostly we dodge the issue by saying we're studying "life-like" phenomena, and leave it at that, but at every ALife conference I've been to, there has been a session (with multiple papers addressing this or connected topics). -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.